by Paul Parish

In 20 years of attending Nutcracker
opening nights, I have never enjoyed one so
thoroughly as this year's. It opened last Thursday night at the early hour of 7
p.m., with a fair number of empty seats that kept filling up well into the
party scene. Latecomers were welcome, which seemed apt, indeed, to sum up the
appeal of this show. After all, the most welcome guest at the Christmas party
is Drosselmeyer, and he arrives
late. He also can't blame it on the kids, because he doesn't have any. But he's
the one with the kids most deeply on his mind, he's the heroine's
bachelor-uncle (code for queer?), who made the Nutcracker for her.

If the audience was late, the dancers were ready, maybe
because they'd sharpened it up for national broadcast, which was presented last
night on KQED (out already as a DVD). Certainly they have never before been so
sharp and clear and vibrant on opening night of Nutcracker
- everybody, from the bottom to the top. The children
were well-prepared, the party-guests were in character, all the business of
lighting the tree and doing the old-fashioned dances and handing out the
presents was handled like counterpoint in a fugue, so you could follow all the
lines to completion and make them out distinctly. The grandparents did their
little dance with a dignity and warmth that reminded me of my own grandmother
dancing with Santa Claus 30 years ago. There were many social moments that
added up to a feeling of Christmas. My favorite was Lily Rogers' fit of the
vapors, which was etched so sharply I can still see it: "No, no, one
second, just give me a second."

Surely my readers do not need to be told that Nutcracker
starts out realistic and becomes hallucinatory
– when the furniture swells up and the mice attack – and then
dazzling, as the heroine and her Nutcracker enter the realm of snow and arrive
in the land of the Sugar Plum Fairy, where all the delights of the world dance
for her, and finally she gets to dance like a ballerina.

SFB's production gives full value to the fantasy. The
furniture comes back giant-sized, atilt, transmogrified. The china-closet lets
down a drawbridge from which soldiers come

marching out to fight the Mice. The
hunky, hairy-legged Rat King crawls up out of the prompter's box and dies
falling back down into it. "Snow" is even more dazzling, with
brilliant dancers cutting sharp figures amidst a blizzard of white flakes
falling from the flies. The choreography is so exacting the dancers must be
absolutely on-target to avoid collisions – it must be scary for them, but
it's very exciting for us. The first-act curtain comes down on a stage ablaze
with white light, truckloads of confetti whirling in the air, and the confident
smile of the ballerina Yuan-Yuan Tan, who's opening out into an attitude that
says, "This is all for you."

The second act is structurally weaker - it requires
spectacular performances to make up for the sparse decor and the relatively
threadbare choreography. Vanessa Zahorian triumphed over the Sugar Plum Fairy's
dull steps by multiplying her pirouettes to a dizzying number. Other remarkable
performances came from the Spanish Chocolate dancers Dores Andre and Frances
Chung, the can-can marzipan girls Courtney Clarkson, Mariellen Olson, and
Jennifer Stahl, and Matthew Stewart, suited up as the teddy bear who tumbles
out of the skirts of Mother Ginger. The three Russian dancers who burst out of
the Faberge eggs stopped the show, as always – they were Gennadi
Nedvigin, Daniel Deivison, and Benjamin Stewart.

Everybody did well. The orchestra hit sour notes, but kept
up a great dancing pulse. Jessica Cohen had a wonderful debut as Clara. Tina
LeBlanc was brilliant, Joan Boada the perfect cavalier in the Grand Pas de
Deux. And Ricardo Bustamante put heroic energy into Uncle Drosselmeyer –
he seemed to be making the Christmas tree grow with his own body English, like
Atlas lifting up the whole world of the show.